


Setting the Fire

by SanSanFanFan



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU Canon Divergence, F/M, Others - Freeform, White Walkers, Wights, winter has come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:45:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2595857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanSanFanFan/pseuds/SanSanFanFan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter Has Come... and five are drawn together to head further North.  But Sansa and Sandor are hiding something... because when Winter comes there is no time for love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Setting the Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sillier-things as a part of the SSFF birthday gift fic thing.
> 
> She wanted a fic where they had to hide their feelings because of their circumstances. So I wrote an apocalyptic canon divergence that could fill a multi-chapter fic and squished it into a short fic... It might not work ;D

He watched her hands as they quickly moved over their massed gatherings of fallen wood. Some pieces she took and placed on the others before her, building up a neater stack with an intricate structure. Some hunks of wood were passed over, even though he could not immediately tell the difference between the chosen and the disregarded. He had found, a while ago now, that he enjoyed this. Enjoyed seeing the slight frown of concentration on her face as she dedicated herself to this task. Enjoyed feeling the calm she made in him as she worked steadily. She was the same with the washing of their few pots. The same when she knelt by what running water they could find and washed their small party’s clothes of the molten gore that sometimes covered them after battle… she could not fight as the others did, so she fought against the mess and the chaos of their lives in this new Winter.

He stood up slowly from his place across from her, on the other side the growing structure of the new campfire. He forced away the groan that fought to come from his mouth as he pushed his stiff leg to move. The cold was not in his fucking bones this day at least, but later he would have to go through some stretches to keep the leg ready in case they needed to fight. He walked around towards her, mentally cursing the limp he was still left with, even after the Elder Brother’s healing of him. He took a new place on the fallen bough beside her, close enough to lay his leather clad thigh alongside her skirted one. That simple touch, even with layers of thick, warm clothes between them, thrilled him. She did not move away, although she should have done.

“Here, you’re missing good wood out.” He looked down at her as he held a piece to her, but she avoided his eyes.

“Leave the girl alone, old dog. She makes a far better campfire than you. Kissed by fire, we say of hair like that in the far north… the north that was. She’s got the fire in her and a gift for setting it. Leave her be!” 

He looked across to where the wildling woman was skinning rabbits. 

“Still your tongue, woman.” 

She cackled her wild laughter. “Make me, you crippled kneeler!”

He smiled back darkly. “Maybe one day I will, wildling bitch.”

She laughed and went back to the rabbit. They cursed each other out more for amusement now than out of malice. It was a comfortable way of avoiding admitting that they’d grown to respect each other. Fuck that. He’d respected her since he’d come across her taking down four of the frozen cunts with just one of those spears of hers. A dragonglass head to it, to be fair, but she was a warrior in her own right and he liked the crass wildling lass well enough now. It had taken her a while longer to accept the limping Hound who’d crossed her path with the Stark girl in tow. But she’d eventually realised that her own fierce love for the Stark boy was reflected in his own for Sansa. 

Although, his love had long been about more than just the protection of the girl… He pushed those thoughts from his mind, even as the closeness of her allowed him to smell her hair and her furs. Two smells that had become so bloody dangerous to him.

“Do you two have to be so mean to each other?!” Sansa looked up at Osha, tilting her head slightly as she asked the question. He tried hard not to watch her every move. Tried hard not to watch the fall of snowflakes onto her reddened cheeks or her long eyelashes…

“Sansa, you never understand…” sighed the girl next to Osha, her own skinned rabbit in her hands, rolling her eyes.

“I understand more than you know!” 

Arya made a rude, dismissive sound and Sansa pouted. Sandor almost laughed but held it back. It was good to see the sisters bickering. For a while after they had been reunited they had kept their distance from each other, no longer certain how to talk to one another after all that they had been through. Not that Arya had been forthcoming on that matter. The part of her life that came after she had left him… left him dying slowly and bloody… was secured away like coins in a lockbox.

The wolf girl that had found the four of them was older, wiser… more deadly. And it had taken her a while to fit herself back into a life that contained her older sister. A life that demanded that she still kill, but this time to kill on her sister’s behalf… and her little brother’s. And even on behalf of the very man she’d left to die. 

He’d dealt with that as quickly as he could after they’d come across the feral looking girl and the hulking she-direwolf in the snow swept Riverlands. He’d taken Arya aside and told her to hit him. To hit him as many times as she’d wanted to. The punches were stronger, more focussed that he’d expected, but he had at least been prepared for the tears that had come as well. And then he’d told her all she needed to know. That he didn’t hate her for her choice. 

After that it was almost like it had been when she’d travelled with him before. The same to and fro of barbed comments from her and snarling retorts from him, but this time the words overlay their new understanding. Gods, that first journey with her felt like a hundred fucking years ago now. Before the start of the Winter. Before the wall fell and the buggering Others came. Before the dreams.

He remembered that he’d woken to the sound of bones cracking. At least that’s what it had sounded like as the noise echoed in his small grey cell. He’d limped outside in his monk’s robe, finding the soft snows that had been falling for weeks replaced by a complete white out as the darkening clouds had finally released their frozen hordes onto the Quiet Isle. And the cracking… he’d found the edges of the isle run over with ice, cracking as it fought against the tides of the bay… and winning. By the end of that week the ice had joined with its fellows coming from the mainland, and there was a perfectly frozen landscape surrounding the isle and joining it once more to the seven kingdoms. By the end of that week he’d started having the dreams as well. The same dream in fact, over and over again. The red bird falling from a great height into snow. 

He’d set out across that ice… a wooden staff in hand to support his still lame leg, an unusually skittish Stranger at his side… not knowing where he was headed, only knowing that the one bird who he could possibly be dreaming of was in danger. 

How he’d found her the gods only knew… or, as they had later come to suspect, whoever had sent them all the dreams knew how… but the flash of red on white had caught his eye as he and the horse had trudged through the rapidly growing snowdrifts. 

He risked another look at her beside him. Her furs were wrapped around her tightly, but he could still make out the edges of the scratches at her neck. They were near healed now, but when he’d found her they’d been livid blood red marks against her pale skin. Too pale. He’d drawn her from the drift she’d been buried in, convinced that he was too late and the near blue skinned girl had fled the world that’d done so much wrong to her. But she’d been breathing, and soon enough he’d assembled a hasty campfire and revived her a little by rubbing her arms and legs roughly through her thick clothes.

If in King’s Landing he’d ever thought that one day he’d be bringing Sansa Stark back to herself by rubbing leathers and furs over her frozen body… well, he’d have thought himself mad and left it at that. But since the Winter had begun stranger things than that had happened to them all. 

She’d accepted that be travelling with him now without a bloody peep of protest. Accepted it when he told her when they’d be stopping. Accepted it when he’d told her to eat, when to drink, when to sleep. She was still so fucking courteous, only opening her mouth to thank him. But the spirit within her, whatever it was that he thought he’d once seen in King’s Landing when she’d spoken back to Joffrey or Cersei… all that seemed to have been lost in the snow. And she would answer no questions about what had happened to her since Joffrey’s death, other than to say simply… ‘the Vale’ and then return to her blank faced silence.

It had been near a week after he’d found her, red hair spread across the snow as her body turned to ice, that they’d been together gathering wood near the sheltered hollow filled with ferns and very little snow that he’d found for their night’s rest. He’d just stood up from picking up a moist greenish branch, about to toss it aside in impatience, when the snowball had hit the back of his head. He turned quickly, catching sight of her as she’d dropped the wood in her other hand and clamped palms to her mouth, covering over a gasp of… of… fear?

“Don’t be afraid, little bird. I ain’t going to growl and bark at you for hitting me with a bloody snowball” He’d attempted a smile to show her he meant it. Gods only knew if that had made it worse… She’d started sobbing.

He dropped what he was carrying and pushed through the snow to her. “Hush… hush, all is well.” 

“I don’t know… I don’t know…” she stuttered through tears.

He pulled her against his chest, feeling her trembling.

“What don’t you know, girl?”

“I don’t know if this is who I am meant to be. I knew in King’s Landing… I was told. I knew in the Vale… he told me.” She looked up at him, her eyes full of tears. “Tell me, is this who I am meant to be?” 

He paused. “I aint going to do that… Did you want to throw the snow?” 

She nodded, holding back more sobs. 

“Do what you want now, lass. But don’t expect me not to retaliate if I get the chance of it!” He tried a smile again, seeing it reflected on her face this time. Then he was suddenly aware of his arms still around her, aware of the closeness of her hair to his lips, the smell of it. The smell of the furs she was bundled in. Good quality ones at that. Bought with gold. 

He released her. “We need to collect more wood if we are going to set the fire soon.” He was brusque, turning away to his task. But then her hand was in his, pulling at it. Pulling him gently back to face her. 

She’d had to stand on tiptoes to bring her face to his, the coldness of her cheeks and her nose running over his skin as she’d tilted her head and kissed him. Her eyelashes, bejewelled by snowflakes, had fluttered on his skin. The side of his face that could feel it, thank the gods.

“Shouldn’t have done that, girl.” He’d warned her, his voice low, but his mind soaring. 

“I wanted to.” She’d said simply, returning to her task of collecting firewood. 

He’d taught her how to set the fire for the first time that night, happy that she was finally listening to him and asking questions instead of staring blankly into the swirling snow as she had done so far. In fact, she’d spent more and more time looking at him, finding ways to be close to him as he showed her the right way to stack the wood. Her hand had rested on his arm as he’d shown her how to work the tinder. Her clothed thigh had rested alongside his as they sat together by the new born fire. Her eyes had shimmered when she’d turned towards him as the night had fallen and as the hollow, its trees closely set and keeping out the snows, had warmed with their fire and their bodies. 

But it had still been colder than an Other’s tit, and as they’d lain down to sleep on either side of the fire he’d pulled his woollen cloak close around him. Until that is she’d walked over to him, a dark shape in the greater darkness, and lain down to curl her back against him, sharing his warmth. Then he’d wrapped it about the both of them as best that he could. 

She had been the one who had drawn his arm around her. She had been the one who had twisted herself to lie on her back next to him. She had been the one who had pulled at her skirts under the cover of his thick cloak, pulling them up and drawing his hands to her so that they could feel their way up the woollen stockings tied with ribbons around the midway of her thighs. The feel of them had nearly done for him, never had he felt such a thing before in the boiling King’s Landing of the long Summer.

So he had been the one who had moved to lie over her, true. But she’d had to urge him on when he’d faltered and tried to stop himself before the deed was done. She had helped him find his fumbling way to her, gasping as he’d broken her maidenhead and holding fingertips to his face to keep him looking into those blessed eyes as he’d moved carefully in her. The gentleness he’d found in himself to show her had been learnt through his days on the isle, and he thanked the gods that he’d had that time to heal. The gods she had him half believing in as her pain turned to something else over the following nights… and she had begun to move for him. Under their shared cloak.

She had begun to whisper to him there too. Whispers about her incomplete marriage to the fucking imp. Whispers about her escape from the city and about that cunt, Littlefinger. She told him how the Winter had come to the Vale with rumours of strange figures seen walking in the snowstorms. Told him how Littlefinger had panicked at the coming of Winter, how he had given up on his plans of a political marriage for her, and come to her rooms one night. How the scratches had come about as she’d fought him off. And how she’d stumbled out of a room splashed with blood and wandered into the snows. How she had followed a dream she’d had of a dog racing through the snow, and of a feeling she’d had that pulled her ever north, deeper into the snows. And whispers had become kisses, kisses that had become her readiness for him again.

But then they had come across the wildling woman in a field of snow, surrounded by frozen warriors that they’d only heard of in legend. Keeping them at bay with a spear with a glimmering black head to it. Protecting a small boy. Fighting alongside the boy’s great direwolf who could break apart an Other with its teeth alone. 

Sansa had charged towards them, skirts dragging in the snow, as soon as she’d seen them, not caring that she was running straight for the dead men’s blades. But the wildling had whipped that spear about and the bone men had melted and bubbled into liquid gore when the end had pierced them, falling to pieces in the snow and vanishing. 

Then there had been the tearful reunion of brother and sister as the Hound had warily regarded the ragged woman standing with the Stark boy. She’d never taken her wild eyes from Rickon, hovering over her charge just as the wolf, Shaggydog, had been doing, its lips peeled back to show its fangs to him. Two wild creatures with their hearts tamed by a Stark. Well, he couldn’t mock that all that much, even if he did scoff a little at the beast’s name when told it. 

But unlike ‘Shaggydog’, and this Osha, he’d had to tame himself even more after their two became a four. Sansa had agreed with him that this wasn’t the time, nor the safest place, for their… feelings… to be expressed widely. What with the Winter, and the Others… and with Rickon following him about all the time like a bloody puppy, trying to learn from the lame warrior… and with the wildling woman clucking like a mother hen over this new Stark she’d never met at Winterfell... So they’d agreed that the old dog would still keep watch on his little bird, but that there’d be no more night time cloakings for now. Even if he was almost certain he was close to finding the bird’s singing voice... 

And then a week or so later they had seen the other large beast racing across the white fields, returning to the wild looking girl with long straggling hair and with blood drying on her hands. Four had become five then, along with two direwolves and a large black destrier. Five brought together by dreams. Osha and Rickon had dreamt of dragonglass on Skagos, finding three of the dark blades buried there amid weirwood trees before the dreams moved them South by water to meet with the rest of them. Three, one for each Stark… or one for each Stark guardian, as Arya had insisted, placing Osha’s oak and twine spears into her hands and his. Keeping one back for herself, of course. 

Arya had said little of her dreams, and little of where she had been. But she’d come when they’d called her back to find them all. Come by ship she’d said, just like Rickon and Osha she’d said. But then she’d sealed her lips on all of that.

“Shouldn’t Rickon be returned by now…?” Said Sansa, concern in her voice, looking up at Osha. Sandor fought his jealousy. Once her questions would have been directed to him… but they’d agreed hadn’t they? Agreed to hide it all?

Sandor stood, too slowly. “Perhaps you should have done as I said and gone with him, wildling.”

“We all need our privacy sometimes, old dog… ‘sides, he’s got Shaggydog with him.”

“And Nymeria” said Arya, forcing a wooden stake through her rabbit.

But Sansa still looked concerned. And she was right to… moments later a long lamenting howl drifted over the whiteness towards them.

“Nymeria!” Shouted Arya and grabbed for her spear.

“You stay here!” He barked at her. Osha was already on her feet and running, her spear held low at her side.

“Fuck that! I’m faster than you!” She went to rise and he marched over and pushed her down to her seat again. 

“Stay with your sister!” He grabbed his own spear, a twinging pain in his leg already making him dread the run. But he couldn’t stay here with her and risk being distracted when the others were fighting. He turned to Sansa and gently grasped her upper arm. “Finish making the fire, we’ll need it… after.”

She nodded, and for a moment he thought of taking a kiss before he ran. But he had to go. There was no time for them in this frozen world.

He caught up with Osha in a small copse of trees, following her snow tracks there with heavy steps of his own as his leg screamed at him. There were fifteen or so of the cunts surrounding the boy, held back by the two large beasts who’d brought down two or three already. Some of them were just wights, shambling corpses that the dragonglass could tear apart just as well as steel. But some of them were Others, or White Walkers as Osha called them.

Rickon was behind the wolves, breeches hastily held up in one hand, his useless steel dagger in the other. Why in the seven hells had he gone so far away from camp to make his toilet? He’d have some fucking words with the boy later if they survived this! But Osha was already taking down another, a puddle of their sodden mess building at her heels as she wiped them out. He jabbed another in its head and it was gone just like that. 

He wasn’t used to fighting with the spear, it was not a usual Westerosi weapon apart from in Dorne and beyond the lost Wall. But Osha had been giving him some pointers, and he swung it in a low arc, ignoring the raging fire in his leg, and knocked over another. He slammed the dragonglass point into its chest, before pulling it back out, deceased flesh flying from it, and jabbing it into the forehead of another which had gotten behind him. He fell into the familiar rhythm of killing, leaving melting and hacked apart bodies in the snow as he sliced through the group. And then it was over, and Osha was leaning on her spear, giving him a tired but exultant smile.

“I got seven to your five, old dog.”

“You had a head start on me, you stupid wench!”

She pulled Rickon hard to her side. “We’ll be having words when we get back to the camp, little lord!”  
Rickon nodded mutely, but then raised a hand to point. Sandor’s breath caught in his throat. Black smoke was spiralling into the sky, an immense cloud of it swirling and twirling up into the frozen sky. Coming from where their small camp was.

He was running again even before his leg had a chance to complain about his abuse of it. And then the only sounds in that bleak whiteness, for what felt like an eternity, were the huffing of his own breath and the thudding of his heart. But Osha and Rickon, and the beasts, were trailing him. His fear had simply shut down his awareness of them.

Fire! Fire was holding the wights back! A high circle of it that hungrily flickered towards the dead men. And inside Arya was jabbing at them with her spear, taking them out one by one. But more were coming, a herd of the whoresons, staggering through the snow towards the overhang of trees guarding their small camp. His eyes strained to look through the flames to see Sansa, making out a shape behind Arya, the smaller girl standing in front of her as she culled the frozen cunts.

Osha and the direwolves carved a path through the bodies before she grabbed at her little lord and leapt with him through the flames. The wolves were happy enough to remain outside the ring of fire and smoke, leaping onto the backs of wight after wight. But he should… he should… seven fucking hells.

“Sandor!” It was her voice, calling to him, calling him in the fucking protection of the flames. A wight grabbed at him and he elbowed it in its decaying face, forcing it back long enough for him to impale it on his spear.

“Sandor!!” her cry was more desperate, and he could see her, drifting closer to the flames to see him. He steeled himself, and jumped the fire, near barrelling into her on the other side. The two of them crashed to the floor, and she ran worried hands over him.

“You are not burnt, you are not burnt!” 

A small hand slipped into his. But then he was on his feet again, standing shoulder to shoulder with Osha and Arya as they jabbed the spears through the flames, taking out the wights. It felt as though hours passed in the task… but finally Sandor impaled an ice born man, and none come to replace him. 

Something about the last of them bothered him, and he tried to glimpse its body through the red and orange wall. The flesh was frozen, decayed, but there was still a hint of a close trimmed beard on the jaw… and his furs had been once been fine and well crafted, if now ragged and torn. Bought with gold.

He felt Sansa come to stand at his side, and he moved quickly to get her away from the sight, but she stood resolute. She said nothing, but simply nodded, as though something was finally finished.

He looked about then, taking in the still burning circle of fire. “How…?”

Arya piped up when Sansa did not. “She built it! Got me running back and forth to the tree line for wood, but she was the one who knew how to lay the wood and get it started!”

“That’s not possible… The fire was… immense. It was roaring, how could she have…?!”

“She also used some of your hidden bottle on it. Guessing whatever you were saving that crap for… well, it saved us.” Arya laughed, and Sansa blushed slightly as he stared at her in wonder.

“Told you old dog. She’s got a gift of the North in her. She’s kissed by fire…”

And then he _was_ kissing her. He’d pulled Sansa to him without even thinking about their agreement, about their decision to wait until later to let this thing happen between them. He was kissing her and smelling the fire on her, but also the smell of her hair and her furs. He was near crushing her lips with his fierce love, but she did not push him away.

“You owe me an extra rabbit leg, Arya.” Rickon was saying as the limping warrior and the fire haired lady paused and stood staring deeply into each other’s eyes.

“Yeah, you win.” Arya ruffled her brother’s hair. “I really did think that they’d hold out until after we passed the ruined Wall… but seeing them mooning over each other all the bloody time was fucking annoying, so I don’t mind losing to you all that much, Rickon.”

“Leave them be, wolf girl. Winter’s hard enough. We’ll need a bit of Summer to carry with us as we head into the further North to find our dreaming little lord.” Osha cleaned the dragonglass head of her spear on her cloak and smiled at the pair of them. “And the old dog’s got more fight in him when it’s for his lady. He may even beat me in kills one day…”


End file.
